| | Nellie McCLUNG
Nellie McClung was a Canadian writer, pioneer and opinion leader who greatly enriched our country through her tireless efforts to secure the vote for women, and put in place a number of progressive policies in a wide variety of areas.
Working as a teacher and a writer, Nellie McClung was also a popular public speaker, with a particular focus on suffrage and temperance. Her enthusiastic support of the right of women to vote led to success in 1916. That year, Manitoba became the first jurisdiction to recognize that right, as well as a woman’s right to run for elected office.
Nellie McClung was also one of “Famous Five” (along with Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Emily Murphy and Louise McKinney). In 1927, this courageous and determined group of equal rights advocates helped overturn a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada by appealing to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, which at the time was the highest Court of Appeal for Canada. In 1929, the Judicial Committee found that women were indeed “Persons” under the British North America Act, and were eligible to be appointed to the Senate.
In addition to these historic achievements, Nellie McClung was elected to the Alberta legislature. In a relatively short career in active politics (1921 to 1926), she helped secure important legislative reforms for women, seniors, children and workers.
Nellie McClung also played a critical role in a number of important initiatives, both here in Canada and on the world stage. She was a delegate to the Women’s War Conference in 1918; a delegate of the Methodist Church of Canada to the 1921 Ecumenical Conference in London, England; and a member of the Canadian delegation at the League of Nations in 1938. Nellie McClung was also the first woman member of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Board of Broadcast Governors, from 1936 to 1942. She passed away in 1951.
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